RB Australia is a company that embodies the idea that problems start at the top and flow down. It's a corporation with the resources and potential to be a good workplace that completely mishandles it by the flagrant cut-throat attitude of the high leadership and incompetence of (some, not all of) its middle management. Specific problems as follows:
- The industry itself is fairly developed/stagnant, so "success" was incremental and mostly meaningless. Leadership was dominated by managers from overseas on a stint with no interest in the local workplace culture or incentive to accomplish anything other than squeezing blood from the stone. As a result, pumping as much value from as few people as possible was the name of the game. At one of the annual company vacations the managing director crowed that "66% of employees were newly onboarded in the last 12 months", an incredible spin on the enormous churn and burnout rates we were seeing at the time.
- Its a terrible culture of blame. I cannot stress how much time and energy is wasted on attributing blame for mistakes rather than actually resolving them (especially tiresome if you find yourself arguing with colleagues overseas who have different KPIs , and therefore priorities, to you). It poisons people's attitude against one another as you never know who is pointing fingers at who.
- HR was highly incompetent. Most of the team acted a lot more like gossipy high schoolers desperately trying to look good to the leadership team than professionals. Their only concern was in pushing the company line, regardless of churn rates, burnout, and literal break downs in the office (which happened occasionally). You couldn't even trust that what you told them in meetings wouldn't "get out" to others afterwards.
- Work life balance was dreadful. Because of churn and the reluctance to hire new people quickly, more and more work is put on less and less people. Working till 7 or 8 pm was extremely common and implicitly encouraged depending on team (some are better than others, marketing and supply were the worst).
- Salary was mediocre unless you're middle management or above, which even then was often tied to how "friendly" you were with the right people.
- Office culture was very cliquey and heavily weighted towards loud, crass, "bro" culture. Might work for some people, but bad luck if you're not aligned with that very particular character type.
